"I found a passion for both biology and chemistry in high school and thought, Well, that must mean I'm a biochemist! Luckily my naïve thought was correct. I am a biochemist," says Bil Clemons,
Ph.D. He's a professor of biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where he's been teaching and running a lab for nearly 20 years.

A Path to Research

Dr. Clemons doesn't remember a time when he wasn't interested in science or curious about the world. "I think, fundamentally, that's what being a scientist is: being curious about how the world works," he says. As a child, he'd open seed pods to see the insides or take toys apart to see how their tiny motors worked. He couldn't always figure out how to put the toys back together, though, which led to his parents warning him not to ruin his siblings' new toys on Christmas morning.

Anesthesia is a treatment that prevents patients from feeling pain during procedures like surgery, medical tests, and dental work. Anesthesiologists are doctors who have been specifically trained to give medicines used for anesthesia, which are called anesthetics.

Depending on the procedure they’re having, patients receive different types of anesthesia:

Haley Bridgewater, a graduate student at Boise State University in Idaho, is sure she wants to continue studying infectious diseases after she graduates with her Ph.D., but she's finding it difficult to choose a specific topic within that branch of biomedical science. "My problem is that I like them all. The more I look into specific research topics to narrow down my options, the longer my list of potential topics grows," she says.

Haley's early introduction to science wasn't related to the biological sciences at all. She grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where her dad studied nuclear chemistry. Discussions about chemistry, physics, and rockets surrounded her, and she would often stare up at the night sky to catch a glimpse of a meteor shower or the International Space Station passing by. But she was even more curious about what was below her feet: What makes an insect different from a rock? What does the microscopic world look like? She received a microscope one year for her birthday and carried it with her everywhere so she could try to answer these questions.

Global Experiences

Haley took an advanced biology class in high school, where she learned not only about the living world, but also the many exciting scientific careers available, such as becoming a researcher. She moved to Tacoma, Washington, and earned a bachelor's degree from Pacific Lutheran University (PLU), where she majored in biology and global religion.

“Curiosity was a central theme in my learning process,” says Sudha Chakrapani, Ph.D., a professor and chair of the department of pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. As a high schooler in India, she especially enjoyed her science classes because they fostered her curiosity and allowed her to ask more questions than other subjects did. She was curious about how to use science to solve the challenges she and her community faced, like access to safe drinking water. Seawater surrounded them, so could they find a way to convert it into drinking water?

As part of India’s annual National Teachers’ Day celebration, high school seniors take on the role of educators and teach their younger peers for the day. Dr. Chakrapani loved the experience, and it solidified what she already knew: She wanted to go to college to be a science teacher. After earning her bachelor’s degree, she entered back-to-back master’s programs in biochemistry and biomedical engineering, where she had the opportunity to do hands-on research.

We’ve interviewed many NIGMS-funded researchers over the years to learn about their career paths and passions inside and outside the laboratory. Many have shared advice for students who are interested in pursuing a career in science. We’ve compiled a handful of those nuggets of advice here and hope that they help you find inspiration to chase your career goals. Check out the links to the full Biomedical Beat blog posts featuring these researchers if you haven’t already.

It might sound like a science fiction author made up genetic engineering, but it’s a real tool researchers use in the laboratory! A gene is a segment of DNA that codes for a protein. The information within a gene directs the building of a protein, block by block, through the process of gene expression. For a variety of reasons, including learning about certain cellular processes, scientists use genetic engineering in the lab to manipulate a cell’s genes and the proteins they encode.

One of the most commonly used genetic engineering techniques is called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), named for the odd, repeating sequences that researchers found in bacterial DNA in 1987.

Eventually, researchers discovered that these sequences are part of a bacterial immune system. (Just like humans, bacteria are susceptible to viral infections!) Some bacteria are able to insert short sequences of DNA from viruses that previously infected them into their own genome, allowing them to “remember” and more quickly recognize that virus in the future. If the invader tries to attack again, the bacterium recognizes and kills it by chopping up the part of its DNA that matches the “memory” using a special type of protein, an enzyme called CRISPR-Associated (Cas) protein. Our own immune systems also have the ability to remember pathogens through our adaptive immune response.

Sepsis is a condition that can occur when a person's immune system responds inappropriately to an insult, such as an infection or injury. This condition occurs unpredictably and can be life threatening. Of the 1.7 million adults in the U.S. who develop sepsis every year, at least 350,000 die as a result.

Many of us enjoy learning about topics like plants, weather, or rocks, but did you know that you can make a career out of your love for science? Scientist is a job title, just like carpenter, firefighter, or lawyer. At NIGMS, we work to get students interested in careers in health science. Read on to learn about some of the different jobs that biomedical scientists do and the level of education they require. (Find more info on the different education paths in our first post of this series.) And who knows, maybe this post will spark your interest in pursuing one of these jobs in the future!